


Yuuri, in Transit

by rironomind



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 12:48:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8891359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rironomind/pseuds/rironomind
Summary: Travelling is a lonely ordeal





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write this from episode 1 since I saw Yuuri get off the train alone. I might add an epilogue when the finale comes out, who knows.

From Japan to Detroit, USA (1) 

Breathe. You can hear the rumbling of the wheels on the tarmac. Breathe. Your pale face reflected onto the windows. Breathe.

Travelling feels like a lull in life, an intermission where you can’t exercise. Before when you started to have thoughts like these, you would practice or exercise or skate and the thoughts were drowned out by the sweet ache of your muscles and the following endorphin rush. There’s no space to do any kind of proper exercise while travelling. There’s only the scenery rushing by, morphing into images that stick in your brain and tell you about all the precious time that’s slipping by.

You drum your fingers, jiggle your leg and then stop yourself every time you catch yourself doing it and then do it all over again.

Your soul is trapped on the ice and you are travelling to meet it. How far have you travelled now? You don't know. The road is long and endless and the ice is thick and cold. How long has it been since you last breathed? The ache in your chest and throat tell you it’s been too long.

Breathe.

 

From Detroit, USA to Japan (1) 

Your coach Celestino always accompanies you to tournaments, but when you travelled to America, you travelled alone and now that you’re returning to Japan, you are alone as well.

When you sit, you can feel the way your stomach has swelled over the waistband of your trousers, the fat doubling over on itself. Holding it in hurts, but feeling it sag over your trousers hurts in a different way. Your cheeks, round in a way you can _feel_ in your mouth, grow warm at the way the other passengers are looking at you. Earlier today, someone almost recognised you in the airport. You didn’t stick around but you remember the way their face changed, like light hitting the ice.

You could lose this weight easily, but you’re carrying it for now, it feels like a handcarry you can’t put down. You wait for the air stewardess to come around and tell you to store any excess baggage into the overhead compartments or under the seat in front of you. You prepare for the moment their eyes alight upon you and get ready to change your face.

-

It takes you a while to realise the way you’re trembling has nothing to do with the in-flight turbulence.

Your heart is racing with more than just adrenaline and your stomach roils and lurches along with the plane. You stand up and walk past the shadows of the other passengers buried under their complimentary blankets, their bodies sodden with sleep and fatigue. The tear stains on your glasses make the toilet sign even blurrier, you shiver as the cold cabin air chills the sweat gluing your clothes to your skin and you push strands of oily hair from your face.

The ticket clenched in your fist is crumpling.

That morning, your coach had asked if you were okay. You’d said, I’m fine. Then repeated your answer later when he banged on your door a second time at 5am in the morning shouting are you done packing? You have a plane to catch! Repeated it a third time when he asked if you were crying.

_No. I’m fine._

You choke on your own lie. Your dog is _dead_.

 _Vicchan_ is dead.

The flight attendant moves to block your path, “Excuse me sir, you can’t use the toilets when the plane is in turbulence.”

The lights of her eyes have hit your face, and it has changed in complete embarrassment at your lack of foresight. You’re not sure what it has changed to but you feel a little vindicated when it churns the fatigue and professional courtesy from her face into a frenzy. She reaches forward to put her hand on your shoulder but you’re already backing up until you reach your seat.

You’re trembling. Then again, why wouldn't you be?

 

From Beijing, China to Japan (2) 

He relented to catching a redeye because you were caught in traffic and missed the flight and he wants to go back to Hasetsu as soon as possible to see Makkachin.

(It has nothing to do with the way you froze up when you saw the departure board. It has nothing to do with the announcement on the speakers. It has nothing to do with how he placed his hand on your shoulder, the other on your cheek, and said, “Forget the hotel. Let’s go home. Right now.”)

He’s not used to catching late flights. He could afford to travel during the day so he always did. He doesn’t complain too much about it, nor does he complain about the economy seats you have. He doesn’t complain about the cramped chairs, or the stained tray tables.

He doesn’t speak to you because he is tired and it’s been a long day. But he has been smiling proudly at you this whole time. He brushes your sweaty, oily hair from your face and kisses you.

And when he thinks you’re sleeping, he pulls down your face mask and kisses you again.

 

From Detroit, USA to Japan (1) 

The plane lands with a shudder that ripples through the cabin. The people are jostled about like beads in a rattle and your teeth clack painfully together in way you can feel in your skull. This unavoidable turbulence has the baby in seat 23A crying. A scream so terrified, so base in its instinctual aversion to danger that the constant thrum of anxiety under your skin pales before it.

You have no chance to feel sorry for it, you are too busy feeling sorry for yourself for growing out of that excuse, for not being able to adapt to a higher state of ignorance fuelled by a nihilisitc denial of what-ifs and could-haves like your fellow adult counterparts. You gather your belongings, ready to stand so you can retrieve your bag from the overhead compartment when a burp works its way up your throat. You cover your mouth to preserve decency before it escapes but to your horror the remains of your in-flight meal tumble into your hand.

Your eyes water, your face is heating in embarrassment, the fat spills over your waistband as the vomit spills into your hand. The person beside does not turn to look at you but you’re not looking to check, too busy trying to find a tissue. Pairs of hands might be reaching towards you.

You don’t look to check.

 

From ?? to ?? (1) 

Focus on skating. Focus. The world is rushing by you. Focus. The world is leaving you behind. F-focus. The flight, er train attendant comes round to check your ticket, er offer you a drink, er sell you a drink, no, she's here to check your train ticket after all. Wait, that's the wrong ticket, no er, sorry it's in your coat pocket, the lef- ah perhaps it was the right one after all. Here, ah, not the receipt, she doesn't need that, of course she doesn’t.

Wait just one moment, sorry. You’re very sorry, sorry. You’ve wasted a lot of people’s time and money and it was all because you couldn’t pull yourself together for three fucking minutes and-

Sorry, here it is, the tic-

There is no one in the aisle. There is no one on the train. You’ve gotten it wrong again, the shinkansen doesn’t have ticket inspectors. The shinkansen doesn’t have passengers.

So, what are you doing here?

You have a headache. You imagine circles rotating slowly, around the rink, around a pole, around and around.

A train travelling in circles. Destination: undetermined.

 

From Japan to Beijing, China (2) 

For the first time, you don’t really notice how hard your heart is pounding in your ears because someone is speaking to you.

You can’t really say anything back because your throat is suddenly very, very dry. But you’re focusing on all the places they say they want to go. They’re making an announcement that the plane is about to land, first in English, then in Chinese. You’re finding it very difficult to focus on all the different languages at once.

The flight attendant comes by and her lips are moving but you can’t hear very much. You’re about to ask her to repeat herself when the man beside you plucks your headphones from your front seat pocket, and stows away your tray table for you. Then he reaches over and pushes up the blinds.

The light of the sun pushing up from the clouds on the horizon is blinding.

You squint, watching how the wing slowly cuts through the cloud layer and a large sprawling city is laid out before you. “Look Yuuri,” someone says. “There’s the Great Wall.”

You swallow, and look back. The smile that greets you is even more blinding.

It belongs to the man in the seat beside you. The man does not belong in the seat beside you. He is skating legend Viktor Nikiforov and he is your coach.

You don’t believe you could be back here, flying above China, about to embark on the Grand Prix Series.

You don’t believe it. You don’t believe anything.

You do, however, believe him.

 

From Japan to Moscow, Russia (2) 

There’s hair tickling your nose. It belongs to the man in the seat beside you. Under the blanket, his fingers are entwined with yours because he says his hand is cold. But you were born in a cold country yourself and the temperature at this altitude simply doesn’t compare.

There’s a pretty Russian child in the seat in front who has been looking back from time to time at the pretty Russian man beside you. Their soft golden locks poke through the gap between the seats followed by a curious blue gaze. Their mother chatises them but they do it again and again. He loves the attention, cooing at the child in Russian and making them blush.

You watch this interaction, the fatigue from the four hour transfer time swells to a painful stretch under your skin. But you’re smiling, and you smile at the mother when she looks back apologetically. She understands a bit of English so you reassure her, her child is absolutely lovely.

Sometime after lunch, the plane hits turbulence and you’re rocked up and down in your seat. Soft cries of alarm rise from the seats around you. As seasoned travellers, this level of turbulence is nothing to you and him. But the lovely golden child in front of you is terrified.

They shriek and wail at their mother, begging, pleading for her to do something. Only once do they turn to him with despair in their eyes, “самолет врежется”

He smiles at them and leans forward to say something so soft and low you cannot catch it. The child’s eyes lose that sharp edge of hysteria and they nod, their face changing like light when it hits the ice. They turn back to their mother who wraps an arm around them and holds them as close as she can over the armrest.

He has not let go, has not stopped tracing circles into the back of your hand with his thumb.

You know this turbulence is normal and want to tell him he does not need to hold your hand so tight. You know the turbulence ends someplace and that the plane will land safely in Moscow. There, you will go take the taxi to the hotel and tomorrow he will take you to all his favourite places.

Before you can say anything, he smiles at you, and your pulse begins to slow from its screaming speed. You loosen your grip on the handrest, and all you can think is, Oh.

“Yuuri,” he says, in halting Japanese. “You’re so warm.”

 

From Japan to Detroit, USA (1) 

Your eyes are red when you land and when your coach asks why, you say you didnt get much sleep.

 

From Moscow, Russia to Fukuoka, Japan (2) 

The flight was quiet. Or it could have been loud, but you’re not sure. You don’t remember anything that happened past entering the ice back in Moscow. You remember opening your mouth but you don’t remember what you said, you remember moving your legs but you don’t remember where you went. Your soul is trapped and you’re travelling to meet it.

You see Makkachin first, barking excitedly, and as you blearily wonder when they began to allow dogs in here, you see him.

And it’s like you can see _something_ , like the world is sharper, or brighter, or warmer. Even through glass it can feel this warm.

Then you both start running.

 

From Japan to Barcelona, Spain (2) 

He doesn’t stop touching you, the whole flight. It’s a long flight.

He holds your hand, tucks your hair behind your ear, rests against your shoulder when the long journey wears on him. He’s so warm. All these tiny gestures keep your grounded even though you’re miles up in the air, even though you’re skating across a horizon of clouds.

As the plane is landing, and the unavoidable turbulence rocks the plane, your legs unconsciously start to jiggle but by now, he’s well-versed. He places one warm hand on your thigh and you stop yourself.

You apologise, but he just slides his hand up your thigh suggestively and laughs when you flush and protest. But you’re laughing too.

You’re still laughing when the seatbelt sign is turned off and he stands to take out the luggage in the overhead compartment. He offers you a hand up.

“There,” he says. “Not so hard, was it?”  

 

From ?? to ?? (2) 

You’re travelling in circles. You must be. Even though you can see the scenery rushing past, and you can feel the rumble of the train, the loud crash and rattle of the wheels on the tracks, the sun still hasn’t set. Will the sun ever set?

You’re sitting alone in a cabin stained with orange and yellow and red, the light slanting across the cabin in broad, brash strokes. Are you ready to get off at your destination? You don’t know.

“Yuuri,” someone says.

Your head jerks up. You weren’t alone, although you thought you were.

He is here, sitting across from you, on the other row of seats lining the cabin. He is leaning forward, his forearms resting against his thighs set a little apart, his head inclined slightly so his hair catches the light and paints it from silver to golden. He is looking at you so kindly it makes your heart ache.

Your lips press against your teeth. V-

“We’re going to get off at the next stop,” he says.

“Are you ready?” he says.

He starts to sit up as the station rushes into view, the lines becoming less blurry. He gets up as the train pulls to a halt at the station. You notice that the sun has set. The doors open and he’s already walking towards it. He has no luggage, just the coat you lent him. You’re wearing his.

You start to get up but you’re a little slow and the doors begin to close. He turns when he realises you haven’t gotten off. “Yuuri? Yuuri!” He shouts, beginning to run as the train starts to move again.

You shout back but no words come out. The train is disappearing into the night.

“Yuuri!” he shouts. “Don’t worry! I’ll be waiting for you at the next stop! You can do this! Remember, I’ll always be waiting when you exit the rink!”

He disappears, the station disappears. The train is still moving but the scenery has faded to a pitch black. 

You can feel the terror begin to rise in your gut, your fingers drumming against your legs- Huh?

There is a weight on your finger. It is round and gold and warm. 

When you open your eyes, the lights around you are blinding. The crowd is cheering, and you relax from your end pose, sweat pouring down your temples. You cast your eyes about, and they land on a man that doesn’t belong on the sidelines. A man that shouldn’t be waving so cheerfully at you, nor should he be smiling so happily or calling your name.

Nevertheless, you believe he is there. You believe in him.

They're making an announcement over the speakers. You remove your soul from the overhead compartment and prepare to disembark.


End file.
